McCain made the trip back to Washington from where he was receiving treatment at the elite Mayo Clinic, in order to cast a crucial vote to move forward debate on Donald Trump’s healthcare bill. The bill’s been stalled in the senate due to opposition from several Republicans and the entire Democratic caucus.

McCain and Trump have been staunch opponents since Trump declared his candidacy for president. The two don’t see eye-to-eye on a number of issues, especially foreign policy vis-a-vis Russia and Syria. But in this case, the president personally thanked McCain on Twitter for his vote:

So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave – American hero! Thank you John.

Yet if Trump thought McCain was going to slip unnoticed into the senate, cast his vote, and slip quietly back to his hospital bed, he was to be disappointed.

McCain made a great show of his entrance to the senate chamber, arriving fashionably late, and then giving a grandstanding speech in which he slammed his own party’s legislative strategy, calling for compromise with Democrats (who have steadfastly refused any form of compromise with President Trump or Republicans).

In a 15 minute moralizing address, the old neo-con took at least three thinly veiled swipes at his own president, whom he was ostensibly there to support. Firstly, McCain made it clear that despite voting to start debate, he had no intention of voting for passage of Trumpcare:

I voted for the motion to proceed to allow debate to continue and amendments to be offered. I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now.

Secondly, although the vote was about healthcare, McCain took the opportunity to assault the president’s authority to determine the nation’s foreign policy, insisting that the senate was co-equal with the president in foreign affairs:

We are an important check on the powers of the Executive. Our consent is necessary for the President to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and in many respects to conduct foreign policy…we play a vital role in shaping and directing the judiciary, the military, and the cabinet, in planning and supporting foreign and domestic policies

McCain would have never made such a statement during the glory days of neo-con moron George W. Bush and his aggressive war on Iraq. But now that the nation has a president, even a president of his own party, who believes peace is preferable and and seeks detente Russia, the old Russophobic warmonger is ready to usurp the president’s prerogatives.

Article II of the US constitution requires the president to seek the “advice and consent” of the senate in the making of treaties, and appointment of ambassadors, cabinet members, supreme court judges, and other public officers as congress may direct.

Since the founding of the republic, this has always been interpreted to mean the senate must approve the president’s treaties and appointments. It does not mean that the senate, to say nothing of individual senators like McCain and doppelgänger Lindsey Graham, may carry on their own foreign policy contrary to that of the president.

There is only one head-of-state. And the conduct of a nation’s foreign affairs properly belongs only to the head-of-state and those whom he appoints to exercise that function.

John McCain knows this, but he decided to use what could well end up his final speech on the senate floor to attack Donald Trump’s constitutional authority to determine US foreign policy. In doing so he attacked the US constitution itself just as he has in every illegal and undeclared war, conflict, and coup he and his ilk have supported over the last several decades.

But McCain wasn’t finished. He then launched into a noble sermon extolling American Exceptionalism, slamming President Trump’s immigration policy in the process:

America has made a greater contribution than any other nation to an international order that has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have been the greatest example, the greatest supporter and the greatest defender of that order. We aren’t afraid. “We don’t covet other people’s land and wealth. We don’t hide behind walls. We breach them. We are a blessing to humanity.

“A blessing to humanity” – apart from placing the Washington globalist empire on a level equal to Lord Himself, and the ludicrous idea that the US liberates peoples through invasion, bombing, and fomenting internal strife – which I suppose McCain might actually believe – the lowest point in McCain’s disgracefully disingenuous speech no doubt was his swipe at Trump’s border wall plans.

McCain himself has been a strong advocate for mass amnesty for illegal aliens, and seems to think there is no problem with millions of drug dealers, gang members, murderers, sex slavers, and other miscellaneous criminals pouring into his own state of Arizona. At the same time he insists the US and Europe push Russia to the brink of World War III to defend a genocidal coup regime in Ukraine which claims it is defending its borders from Russia by shelling the civilian population of Donetsk.

There could hardly be a more repulsive irony.

At the conclusion of his speech, Sen. McCain received a standing ovation from Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.

It was to describe disgusting treasonous cretins like John McCain that the terms “RINO” and “cuckservative” were fashioned. No one better exemplifies them that “Songbird” McCain, who began his treasonous career in Vietnam by spilling every classified secret he knew to the North Vietnamese as well as making propaganda broadcasts.

And it is pattern he has continued over decades of service to the neo-con globalist cause, sacrificing American peace and security in the process, all the while falsely claiming the moral high ground as its champion.

It is high time for John McCain to retire – either to hospital or to prison. America and the world have suffered enough from his brand of pseudo-patriotism.

As for healthcare – President Trump should not count on McCain’s support in this or any other endeavor. Like most of his careerist colleagues, his only loyalty is to himself.